Problem Solved?

I thought of this t-shirt when thinking about this post. I’m not going to deal with the shirt it’s been done by many, one of the best here.

No I was thinking more of the interest lately some “progressives” have been showing in the disingenuous remarks made by Elizabeth May. The responses made to those who reject the notion that anyone has the right to take a “nuanced” approach to their reproductive rights has been interesting to say the least.

We have been accused of being Green bashers, dinosaurs, radical, reactionary, Stalinist, unable to see shades of grey ( I love that one. As if there are shades to human rights. )

These same defenders of Ms Mays’ right to call women frivolous, have no qualms about trying to shut down discussion when women — remember us guys? we’re the ones with the wombs — express their discomfort and displeasure with the fact that those so willing to score political points and street cred with their reputed support of feminism and feminists are unwilling to show actual support of so fundamental an idea as reproductive freedom.

This even as they claim that their voices are being silenced.

We are allowed to be feminists just as long as we are nice little feminists who listen when the boys tell us what feminism means, how feminists should act and what issues we should see as meaningful.

Our anger is being used against us in ways that must have even the nastiest of misogynists gaping.

As if anger is an inappropriate response when ones rights are seen as fodder for debate. As if anger is inappropriate when one is asked to repeat a tour of duty. As if anger is inappropriate when the speaker of the words cozies up to the friends of the people who do this.

Anger is neither inappropriate nor enough. It is not time for nuances nor debates.

It is time to choose up sides, you believe that women have the right to live as autonomous human beings or you do not. You believe our society is better served when all people are free and equal or you do not. You believe that women’s voices are important or you do not.

You believe the behaviour shown in the shirt above is an appropriate response to women defending what has been shown to be important not only to women’s health but also to society as a whole, or you do not.

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Comments

It’s especially worrisome that this is happening right now on the left, or among supposed progressives. We know what to expect from the zealots, but there seems a general low level of hostility to women that is suddenly breaking through the surface again, and right at a time when serious enemies are signalling that they are on the move against women’s autonomy.

“Our anger is being used against us in ways that must have even the nastiest of misogynists gaping.
… It is not time for nuances nor debates.
… It is time to choose up sides, you believe that women have the right to live as autonomous human beings or you do not.”

Your anger is working against you, it isn’t being used against you by me, or Dr. Dawg, or any of the progressives you’ve found fit to attack for standing up for the right to reasonable discussion.

Your comments about this not being time “for nuances nor debates” is better suited to a despot like Bush, than a feminist looking to further the cause of human equality in the world.

If you want to see someone attacking you, check out Big Blue Wave, or SDA for them mocking your Women are Angry graphic. Or continue to harp on people who support equality for women – I won’t be one to ‘attack’ much harder than with this rebuttal to your attack on May, but I have no doubt that there are others in the blogosphere (this being essentially an unmoderated discussion forum) who will take your radical approach [to May’s comments] and hold it up for the attention seeking farce it’s become.

==

“It’s especially worrisome that this is happening right now on the left, or among supposed progressives. We know what to expect from the zealots, but there seems a general low level of hostility to women that is suddenly breaking through the surface again, …
I feel ambushed, and very worried.”

Skdadl, could you perhaps be thinking a little too dramatically out loud? I’ll stop thinking of you as a supposed feminist, if you stop calling me and others supposed progressives because we don’t agree on the extent of allowable discussion on the topic of abortion.

The low level of hostility is not directed at the feminist movement, but rather people in it who seem to want to attack the character of other supporters of equality.

The shirt picture is an ironic one, since Debrah identifies with the woman being pushed off the cliff, and with the type of stuff that’s been going on, I’m inclined to suggest a good number of men trying to speak from their viewpoint in support of women, also feel like that silenced woman too.

Elizabeth May is not a supporter of equality. We’ve been done this road so many times but anyone who wishes to divide women who need abortion into categories of “desparate” and “frivolous” is not an ally of mine. She insults me and she insults millions of Canadian women. Despite her assurances to the contrary, May never gave us nuance. She gave us insults. And we are handing back unequivocal statements of principle, without dressing them up to make them seem more palatable to our enemies.

Choice means that we don’t have meddlesome, “concerned” people getting into our psyches and deciding if our motives are “pure” enough to let us have control over our bodies. Choice means it’s our choice. Full stop. None of anyone’s business what our reasons are. Why is that so hard to get?

Saskboy, what does “your radical approach” mean? The opposite of radical is superficial; do you prefer a superficial approach? Is radical a bad word?

The rightwingers like to talk about “radical feminists”; is that what you are thinking of? What is the difference between a radical feminist and a non-radical feminist? Who gets to define what feminism is?

Elizabeth May’s position on abortion is recognizably Hillary Clinton’s, the position of someone who feels she must pander to sentimentalized politics and who doesn’t mind fuzzing the clearly defined distinctions of democratic principle.

It doesn’t matter, though, how often we point that out to some people. If May says that her position is nuanced, respectful, and “100 per cent pro-choice,” even when it clearly is not, some people are going to rabbit on into eternity about how nuanced, respectful, and “100 per cent pro-choice” she is.

I have no idea what that line of yours about my being a “supposed femininst” means, Saskboy, but whether you call me that or stop calling me that is not what frightens me. I first joined a women’s lib group in 1968, so I’m not all that worried about my credentials. “Progressive” is a term of an entirely different kind, and you’re making an illogical equivalence there. No one knows what progressive means any more — clearly. It’s looking more and more regressive to me where women’s liberation is concerned, and that’s what scares me.

I don’t think anyone here is in the radical tradition, though. That’s what gives rise to the questions. Saskboy called April’s approach “radical”. Does he know what “radical feminism” is? Has he read those texts?

I’m guessing not, because April’s writing has little in common with the classics of radical feminism. I’m not big on those labels, personally, but it’s even worse to throw them around with no knowledge of where they come from and what they mean.

Y’know, sometimes I despair … Labels that start to circulate in the general culture generally come from one of two places: the corporate media, who have a clear interest in co-opting and taming any kind of popular politics; and academia, where a few people may be inspired but many are blockheads.

Sorry, Dr Dawg, but it sounds to me as though you and Saskboy have fallen for an advertising campaign. If you’d been a woman, living through the political struggles of the 1960s-90s, you wouldn’t be doing pedantry and taxonomy now.

If Saskboy comes back to answer the question, I anticipate that he will drop Andrea Dworkin’s name right away. That will be the only name he’ll know to drop, and he’ll be wrong, but sure as the night follows the day, he’ll do it. (Or he would have, if I hadn’t written this.)

Andrea Dworkin was first of all a literary figure, not so importantly a political one. First person to mention her had better have a copy of Northrop Frye beside him.

Feminist Approaches to Social Science: Epistemological and Methodological Tenets American Journal of Community Psychology
Volume 28, Number 6 / December, 2000

Abstract This paper is a primer for community psychologists on feminist research. Much like the field of community psychology, feminist scholarship is defined by its values and process. Informed by the political ideologies of the 1970s women’s movement (liberal, radical, socialist feminism, and womanism), feminist scholars reinterpreted classic concepts in philosophy of science to create feminist epistemologies and methodologies. Feminist epistemologies, such as feminist empiricism, standpoint theory, and postmodernism, recognize women’s lived experiences as legitimate sources of knowledge. Feminist methodologies attempt to eradicate sexist bias in research and find ways to capture women’s voices that are consistent with feminist ideals.

Bulbeck, Chilla.
1997 Re-Orienting Western Feminisms: Women’s Diversity in a
Postcolonial World Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

The categories are contested today, but the vocabulary is very much alive. And the question was, “what is a radical feminist?” Please don’t make easy, dismissive assumptions about my awareness (“advertsing campaign”). That’s gratuitous.

I used the word “radical” because the approach that throws unenthusiastic pro-choice progressives out of the “progressive category”, is one that is little better than a ‘boy’s only’ (in this case ‘girl’s only’) club type progressive. Reading more into it than that, as Skdadl already has, is entirely too ridiculous.

If you women don’t start empowering men soon, there will not be anybody from being able to defend you from an invading country that WiLL make you ladies the slaves you always thought you were in times past!!!

American women are the richest and freest women the world has ever seen!

Did you ladies know that despite all this wealth and freedom you have, you are still miserable! How do I know that? Look at all the women who use anti depressants.

there was a survey of 100,000 men and women in 1970 and thirty years later. What they found was shocking, that men were reality the same in happiness between the two points, whereas women were 20 points less happy!

The study is in, women are happiest caring for a loving husband and child. They are not happiest aborting their child and working in the nearest cubicle!

Disgusting display from the Trolls, eh? Well those ‘little fellas’ had best go defend someone with their toy guns somewhere else because so far I’m the only one rising to the bait.

Regarding Elizabeth May, if she can’t be clearly pro-choice as the leader of a party that supposedly has developed a human rights policiy she’s losing any chance of my vote (for what little it is worth). I wouldnt vote for a racist even if she were of an oppressed ethnic minority, so I wont vote for someone who wants women to be shackled to the reproductive choices of men.

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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness